7of7Detail of yarn, knitting needles, and other supplies for the parking meter koozie.Photo: EDWARD A. ORNELAS, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

Billy Muñoz, one of the founders of the Yarn Dawgz knitting collective, spent parts of a recent Monday night with a needle hanging out of his mouth.

“I'll either swallow it or choke on it before we're done,” he joked.

Needles and scissors became important commodities as the Dawgz and pals installed “Knit, Purl, Knit, Pearl (Brewery),” their biggest bit of knit graffiti yet. The group and volunteer knitters recruited through Facebook covered nearly 40 parking meters along Grayson Street with their snuggly-looking work.

“We were originally going to do 30, but people kept making them and making them,” Muñoz said.

The colorful installation is the Yarn Dawgz's contribution to Contemporary Art Month.

As usual, they did their installation after dark — “We do it in the stealth of night,” Muñoz said — though there was one departure for them.

They usually post their pieces guerilla-style, making their peace with the possibility of the work vanishing, but this time, they sought permission from the Pearl Brewery for the installation.

“We loved that it's just a way to celebrate CAM and take something mundane and that we all take for granted and transform it into something really interesting,” said Elizabeth Fauerso, Pearl's chief marketing officer.

Pearl staffers got city approval for the project to make sure that the pieces won't be mistaken as something other than works of art.

“We went to the extra effort of getting a letter from the city, kind of making sure that the people collecting the meter money were aware of them,” said Tatum Evans, who organizes the Pearl Farmers Market and has helped coordinate things from the complex's end.

She's also a knitter who created three pieces for the installation.

Each cover is distinctive — one of Gretchen Roufs' pieces has a thick, graceful cable running through it; one of Evans' features an energetic splash of colors, giving it the quality of an abstract painting; and Dawgz co-founder Dino Foxx knitted one with blue yarn that pops against the mural on the side of La Gloria.

“Everybody is just doing whatever style they do,” Foxx said.

The one thing they have in common is that each has at least a streak of red in it, which is the Yarn Dawgz' signature touch.

There's already been a little bit of talk about future Yarn Dawgz projects at Pearl. For now, they're happy to have this one in place.